With the shift toward “view from somewhere” journalism, we are probably going to see more activist-style stories permeate the news pages. So how do you engage readers who might want to do something about what they are reading?

Rather than designing a widget, I think the way to get readers talking and acting is to simply do a better job of helping them find content they might be interested in and that might provide ammunition for causes they already hold dear.

As we discussed in early classes, the media do a poor job of matching readers with content. In my experience, beyond simple algorithms at the news sites I wrote for, it was typically up to me and online editors to identify communities that would be interested in a new story and target them by emailing a link, tweeting at them with appropriate hashtags, or encouraging sources to share the story. This was time consuming and we weren’t always aware of the key players and interest groups on the subject—especially globally—or we didn’t have time to find their contact information.

This assignment made me wonder whether there is a systematic way to match journalists who write about particular causes to appropriate online communities, newsletters, interest groups, policymakers, discussion boards, Facebook pages, et cetera, so that they can better target their stories and mobilize people for action.

For example, I imagine a website for journalists that allows them to search key words related to a story, perhaps narrowing by geographic region. Let’s say I am writing about the need for transparency in clinical trials. I enter the words “transparency” and “clinical trials” and the website spits out contacts and Twitter handles for advocates of the AllTrials campaign, other journalists, health professionals, politicians, researchers, and activists who already write or talk about clinical trials transparency, and Facebook or other social pages related to the issue. It would be even better if the journalist could enter the entire text of her story, and the website could return all the appropriate related social content and contact information (ie., Twitter handles, Facebook pages, hashtags, etc.) so that the journalist could save time searching. I think this kind of resource would help journalists and editors better match their content with eager readers who are likely to care about and act upon a given story.